In a situation for Blotter Art
You’ll find moments inside our past that shape our vision. Experiencing my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in the early grades, a nice girl who, if she remained alive, will not discover how even in grade 4, she was pointing the best way to freedom of expression. There’s a lesson here which comes in handy for fogeys and grandparents.
We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed if you use ink blotters in class. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the art of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you really wanted in order to save time, you would be far wiser to learn the tortoise.
But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring ways to Bali if we remained stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she might find nothing at all passionate than Japanese prints.
Going Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God which the real writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was essentially the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon the way you control the ink.” There was anything else that should be controlled at the same time, as outlined by Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down on the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a timely, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.
I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For a while, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it absolutely was the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a place at the top right-hand corner in the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the location and watched the darkness grow; several details with all the nib as well as the blotch has been a little bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper plus much more dabs prior to the entire blotter become a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Out of her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion derived from one of corner to the next; she paused just long enough to thicken the very center stretch without having to break the flow prior to the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat for my child desk being a chocolate web.
It was an earlier sort of Acid Art, so distinctive it made nice hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite observe that.
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